Friday, October 11, 2013

Smile (1975)

Several unique talents
operating at the top of their respective games converged for Smile, a wicked satire of American
values viewed through the prism of a second-rate beauty contest. Skewering
ambition, competition, consumerism, hypocrisy, vanity, and other unbecoming
qualities, the movie achieves a fine balance of humor and pathos while
juxtaposing absurd situations with believable characterizations. The project’s
key players include screenwriter Jerry Belson (a TV veteran doing some of his
best-ever work), director Michael Ritichie (in the middle of a hot streak that
included 1972’s The Candidate and
1976’s The Bad News Bears), and actor
Bruce Dern. Though normally cast as psychos, Dern plays a normal character
here, channeling his natural intensity into the fierce characterization of a
small man grasping for social position. His terrific performance sets the pace
for an eclectic cast including such veteran character actors as Geoffrey Lewis
and Nicholas Pryor, plus newcomers Colleen Camp, Melanie Griffith, and Annette
O’Toole. (TV beauty Barbara Feldon, of Get
Smart fame, contributes a rich supporting performance as a
contestant-turned-coordinator.)

Ritchie films the story somewhat in the style
of a Robert Altman movie, with lots of intermingled storylines revolving around
the central event of the American Miss Pageant, so the movie winds through
backstage politics, onstage disasters (some of the “talents” the contestants
display are anything but), and the funny/sad melodramas of characters’ private
lives. At the center of the story is Big Bob (Dern), a used-car salesman with
way too much of his identity invested in the role of head judge. He spends the
entire movie trying to hold the pieces of his life together even as the various
illusions upon which his existence is predicated fall apart; his dissipation is
an arch but effective metaphor representing the way some people blindly pursue
the American Dream. O’Toole, appearing in her first major film role,
personifies the other end of the spectrum—a cynical operator who’s learned the
ways of the world at a young age, thanks to years of having men ogle her
curves. (O’Toole’s character offers less experienced contestants such advice as
using Vaseline to lubricate the mouth during hours of endless smiling.)

Although Smile isn’t purely a comedy,
since many passages of the picture are so pathetic that they’re more sad than
funny, the picture works equally well as a romp and as a rumination. The
spectacle of coaxing teenagers onto a stage so they can pretend viewers are
interested in their ideals and skills—when, really, the name of the game is
peddling flesh—is a fine proxy for the filmmakers’ observations about the
avarice hidden behind American can-do attitudes. No surprise, then, that
Belson’s script was nominated for a WGA Award, or that Smile was revisited for a new medium in 1986, when a musical based
upon the film debuted on Broadway.